


Analysis

by TheStrangeSeaWolf



Series: Darkness and Light [8]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: (at least I guess so), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Flashback on Episode: s08e01 Deep Breath, Flashbacks on Season 8, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Not Your Boyfriend, POV Twelfth Doctor, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Spoilers for Episode: s08e11 Dark Water, Spoilers for Episode: s08e12 Death in Heaven, Telepathic Bond, Vital Force, because analyzing data is always sexy, data analysis, fear of being left alone, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 08:22:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21012707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheStrangeSeaWolf/pseuds/TheStrangeSeaWolf
Summary: A confused Doctor still trying to concentrate again after the confession and a highly professional data wrangling Clara finding out what will ultimately keep her grey-haired stick-insect from regenerating.





	Analysis

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for your comments and kudos on this series. Very much appreciated. :)
> 
> Of course, somewhere I have to address my take on the "not your boyfriend" business. I found it most fitting here. 
> 
> And please forgive an old data wrangler my data wrangling obsession in this story. ;)

She loved him.

His Clara loved him.

This broken, old man in this broken, old body.

Not out of pity or compassion.

It was impossible to lie in telepathy.

Her feelings for him ran just as deep as his feelings for her.

She loved him, this him, with all the flaws and failures.

He felt dizzy.

This hadn’t happened before. Well, yes, it had happened before, but not to this version of himself. He still felt strange in his own body, even if some time had passed since his regeneration.

The emotions ran deep this time. All his previous incarnations were emotional. But they had a good grip on it. At least that’s how it seemed to him in retrospective. But this one was very different. He experienced the fiercest anger, even rage. His curiosity led him into dangerous situations where other versions sure would have chosen safer paths. He felt deep compassion with all creatures, even his enemies. Every single emotion ran so deep it scared him.

In a cruel twist of fate this depth of emotions came with an incapability of understanding social interactions and human emotions. Most of the time he didn’t recognize what people felt and why they did what they did. Accompanied was this trait with a maddening inability to express himself verbally. He missed the right words, chose the wrong ones, it was like his vocabulary was a huge chaos he couldn’t sort out.

There were two exceptions: speeches and stories. When he held a speech, all the words fell in all the right places. His speeches could end wars and negotiate peace treaties. He could bring fierce enemies to put down their weapons and embrace each other. He could bring beasts to cry. He could comfort scared aliens and convince them to trust him. And when he told stories, everybody was listening. Especially children. He felt a special connection to children. With them, communication seemed easier, more natural. He understood them and they understood him. Children liked listening to his stories. Even adults could seldom resist his ability to build a fascinating story arc. He always kept his listeners fascinated.

Speeches and stories were not so much like a sequence of words, they were more like melodies. This incarnation was good with music, maybe that made the difference.

So, he felt he mainly stumbled through his life. Trying to use his ability to hold speeches and tell stories as often as possible. Trying to avoid mistakes as much as possible. Trying to read people as good as possible. Hiding his emotions as good as possible. He tried to be the Doctor as good as this twisted incarnation let him.

There was one thing that kept him going. One thing that made him stand up again whenever he fell. The one thing that that made him try to be the best version of himself, no matter how often he failed. His love. His one true love.

He loved Clara Oswald. Not in the flirtatious way his previous incarnation did. He loved her with all his body and soul. His hearts were both hers since the first time his new face saw her face. He felt better when she was there. Complete, somehow. He never hesitated to throw himself into danger for her. He would gladly sacrifice all his regenerations for her. He would risk the universe for her wellbeing.

He had long ago accepted that this love was not mutual.

She nearly left him after he regenerated.

She couldn’t accept the person he had become.

He had laid his soul bare. He had told her that he wanted to right the wrongs his previous incarnations were responsible for. One of these mistakes was that his previous self had treated her as if he was her boyfriend but never really acted on it.

In his opinion, it was not a fair deal to treat her like a convenient pastime. Picking her up on Wednesdays, showing her wonders, treating her like a girlfriend and then leaving her alone on Earth for her boring ordinary life and go about adventuring on his own.

Either she was his girlfriend, his partner, his soulmate. Then, he belonged by her side, either adventuring together or making her ordinary life a little more exciting by taking her students to trips into history or building kitchen cabinets that are bigger on the inside.

Or he was just her companion and friend, then he could still take her for adventures on Wednesdays but stop the flirting. He should let her have her own life with a boyfriend on Earth the rest of the time, without the competition of a time travelling alien. 

This was what he tried to express when he said he was not her boyfriend. As always, he failed to find the right words for what his hearts wanted to say: That he would be willing and more than happy to be her partner, to be by her side all the time, may it be in the TARDIS or on Earth. But that he was equally willing to accept if she wanted to have him as her “Wednesday adventures in out of space” friend.

Of course, she took it wrong. She nearly left him, and it took a phone call from his previous self to convince her to give this incarnation at least a chance.

Of course, it went wrong. He tried to be a good man for her, but he always failed. He knew she didn’t love him, but like all his emotions, his jealousy was strong. He should have accepted that P.E. was her boyfriend and that he was good for her, but he couldn’t. He consciously tried to steer clear out of their life as a couple, but his subconsciousness couldn’t accept it. Secretly, he always tried to compete with that blasted ex-soldier.

Every time he lost her, his hearts broke. Every time she came back, his hearts jumped, and he was the happiest man alive. He knew she didn’t love him, but her being by his side made him happy, anyway.

When P.E. died, she had betrayed him, trying to blackmail him into changing what happened. He couldn’t believe she would do it, with all consequences, until the bitter end. But she did.

For a moment, he had been devasted. She had betrayed his trust, she had betrayed their friendship, she had let him down in a way he never had expected her to be capable of. Yet, when he had looked into her eyes, he saw it. The deep desperation, the devasting guilt and the burning grief. He realized that her emotions ran just as deep as his own. Her determination was just as fierce as his. Her will just as strong. They were very much alike. 

They were too much alike. They would do anything to see the other happy. They would even lie to each other so they wouldn’t block the other one’s way to happiness. Effectively condemning both to go through the darkest phases of their lives alone, when they would have needed each other’s support the most.

“Probably not the right time to dwell on the past, Doctor!”

Clara smiled up at him. Of course. They had broken the telepathic bond, but as he couldn’t stop holding her in his arms, his mind still leaked.

“Uhm, probably not, no, erm… what?”

Damn. He needed to concentrate and be more careful.

“Regeneration? Your vital force? Probably should do something about it before you suddenly change face and we have to go through this all over again?”

He looked into her soft brown eyes and nodded. But he couldn’t move. Something from his past, from centuries ago, told him that if he let her go now, she would go away and he would never see her again. He felt the burning pain of loss already and tightened the grip.

“Shhh, Doctor, as much as I like your new addiction to hugging, there is no need to squash me.”

“Sorry,” was all he could manage as he loosened the grip a little. Still the onslaught of fear barred him from breaking the hug.

He felt her softly stroking his back.

“Doctor, I’m not going anywhere. It’s safe to let go. We are in the TARDIS in the vortex, so technically I can’t go anywhere anyway. This also means we are safe from any harm. And I promise I won’t leave you, I’m here and I will stay with you, okay?”

Her words trickled through the fog of fear. She was right, she couldn’t go anywhere, and no one could drag her away from him here.

He had to consciously force his arms to let go.

The feeling of loss was nearly unbearable, but thankfully Clara grabbed his hand immediately.

“Shall we see if we can make any sense of the data?”

Data. Something to focus on. Focus to push back the fear. Very clever.

He took a look at the graph.

[ ](https://ibb.co/fY2hkvY)

“Can you help me to make sense of that timeline? I don’t get what happens when. When did you change your opinion on regenerating? Then maybe we can work the rest out from there?”

Clara squeezed his hand.

“What did you choose as a timeframe?”

“From the moment we sat in the library after Skaro until now – well, now being about an hour ago or so.”

He darted to the next blackboard, grabbed a piece of chalk and smelled it. The smell or chalk always helped him to concentrate. Then he began to calculate and scribble. Suddenly he felt safe again, in his own element, running figures through his brain and writing them down. It was nearly like a melody. Transcribing from one time system to another and finally running down the complexity of time to an over simplistic concept a human brain could grasp.

After a few minutes of restless scribbling, leaving the blackboard filled with numbers and Gallifreyan arithmetic operators, he went back to Clara and the monitor.

“Okay, if this is when we sat in the library, we do have a peak in my will to survive about 3 hours in your time concept later.”

“Do you remember what it was that changed your mind?”

Oh yes, he knew exactly. It was when he laid on the sofa in the library, safely cradled in her arms. When she confessed unwillingly that she wanted to smell his hair. When they recalled their adventures and laughed together. This was the time he decided he didn’t want to change. If for unimaginable reasons his Clara accepted this flawed version of himself and wouldn’t like him to change, then there was no reason to regenerate at all.

“Library. Lying down. Smell. Arms… Acceptance.”

Oh, great. One could have thought his verbal skills would improve knowing that she loved him, but the exact opposite seemed to be the case. He blushed ashamed.

She looked at him confused before her face showed a broad amused grin of understanding.

“It was when we were in the library after I took care of your hand and you lay in my arms?”

He was lucky she could make sense of his babble. He nodded.

“Okay, so now we have a second known point and maybe can make sense of what helps refueling your vital force. That drop before that… both in will to survive and vital force… when was that?”

Fortunately, an expert question, somewhere safe. He squinted to the blackboard.

“About two hours earlier, give or take a few minutes, for your understanding of time.”

“You punching the wall.” Clara stated matter-of-factly.

He closed his eyes and flinched at the thought. Mercifully Clara didn’t dwell on this point.

“Okay, something after that point helped you to regain some vital force… And sometime later significantly so. Dear TARDIS, can you show me the detailed graph of the vital force again? Update the graph to now. And could you please indicate the point where his will to survive was back to 99%? And sleep phases, I need an indication of the phases the Doctor was unconscious.”

A friendly hum and the second graph appeared. He wondered when his two girls started being on good terms with each other. Figures, they both were notorious control freaks. And both were equally concerned with his wellbeing. He could consider himself lucky. Although it felt uncomfortable being analyzed like that.

[](https://ibb.co/LPtR8m8)

Clara leaned on the console and frowned at the monitor. He felt the urge to wrap her in his arms from behind and rest his chin on her shoulder to look at the monitor. A strange urge, he thought. Was this something a boyfriend would do? Perhaps? Maybe it was just him being weird. He decided not to do it. She was obviously trying to think and he himself didn’t like to be disturbed when he was thinking.

“Strange… I would have assumed that the sleep phases would have the most significant effect on your vital force. This would be in alignment with what Roskatha wrote. But they don’t seem to have any effect. On the other hand,…” and she tilted her head to give the monitor a scrutinizing stare.

“…Doctor, can you tell me the approximate minutes – my time system – of this and this point?” And she indicated the two points the TARDIS had marked before the first sleep phase.

He squinted at the blackboard, then darted to it, scribbled some more, erased some figures and wrote new ones. Then he shot back to the monitor.

“The first one is about half an hour before the sleep phase, the second about twenty minutes.” He exclaimed; glad he could do something even if the thoughts in his head were so confused, he couldn’t make sense of the data himself.

“Okay… I think I have a hunch. Could you do the same for these three points before the second sleep phase?”

He eagerly scooted to the blackboard to do the rest of the calculations. Her smile when he came back to her side at the console would have been worth hours of calculating, he thought.

“Still strange.” Clara uttered. The TARDIS gave a disapproving noise.

“But then again…” she tilted her head to the other side.

He started to get bored. Or nervous? Maybe both. He started strolling up and down the console room. He wished Clara would give him another task he could concentrate on. He didn’t like her silent staring at the monitor. It was usually his part to do the mysterious things, keeping his companion in agitated anticipation.

“Doctor! Stop that running around and come here.” She stretched out her hand, which he gladly took. She pulled him next to her.

“Okay, I think I finally figured out the points the TARDIS placed here. They are not indicators of change in your vital force, that much was obvious from the start.”

He thought that Clara had decidedly some resemblance with Lady Vastra when she went in full detective mode. Only that Clara was still cute when she did it. Not just cute, beautiful. A beautiful Sherlock Holmes, working on a case, him silently admiring her like John Watson. Oh, damn it, it was hard to concentrate when his brain was flooded with emotions as if he was a love-struck teenager!

“Are you still with me?” Clara asked, using her teacher voice. She caught him with his thoughts astray, of course. He blushed.

“Sorry, boss!” He mumbled, which earned him her smug smile.

“Okay, so when it isn’t a change in vital force, what _are_ these points? I think I figured it out. I can’t account for all the points, but these points…” and she indicated some points along the line “…align well with all the occasions when we bonded telepathically.”

He squinted at the graph. If she said so…

“Now, the interesting thing is: not every time we connected telepathically your vital force improved. But sometimes it did. The question is: why do some bonds work, and others don’t?”

“Then there must have been a difference. Either in the way we connected or in the content of the bonding.” He felt he was slowly catching up.

“Right. And I think I found what it is. Although you will not like it…”

He didn’t give a damn if he would like it or not, he needed to know. If there was an explanation, then there was a chance to do it again and therefore a chance to keep his stupid body from regenerating.

Clara started to name a sequence of points:

“First – The library – you let me see the phone call from Trenzalore. We can’t say if this did something as we don’t know what the previous condition of your vital force was.

Second – You punching the wall.

Point three – You let me see what happened on Skaro. At least how you thought I was killed and how you struggled with the possibility to commit genocide on the Daleks. This had led to an uptick in vital force.

Here I don’t know why the TARDIS chose this point. Maybe it was me taking care of your hand, I don’t know.

We know this fifth point by the uptick in will to survive – it is the moment we lay on the sofa in the library. No uptick in vital force, though, although we had shortly bonded telepathically.

The next one is again one where I don’t really know what happened, but it had a negative effect on your vital force.”

Oh, he knew it. He knew it too well. He had fled her. She shouldn’t make him show her what happened to him on Skaro. The flashback had hit him hard alone in his room.

“I think this must have been the flashback you snapped me out of. Flashback on Skaro.” He mumbled.

“Right. This would make sense. I think the next point are the few moments when I already held you and was able to see some of what happened. Although I still don’t know what happened exactly.”

“Nothing you should burden yourself with, Clara.”

“Well… we will come back to this question. At least that bonding had a positive effect. As well as the next one. I think it was when I looked inside you to find out that being left alone in your room scared you.”

He suddenly wrapped his arms around himself and turned away. She shouldn’t have seen this. It was embarrassing. He was a fully grown timelord. He shouldn’t be scared to be left alone. Unthinkable which other fears she saw and felt during this bonding. He definitely should avoid any further telepathic bonding, or she would lose all respect. By the way, what did she think of him anyway, running around nearly naked, only in a t-shirt and boxers? He should definitely get dressed.

He started for his room.

“Hey, where do you think you are going?” He heard her call behind him.

“To my room, getting dressed.”

He heard quick steps behind him and then she grabbed him by his t-shirt and turned him around, looking up at him.

“It didn’t bother you until now, so no running away. Come here, stay with me.” She shot him a glance from head to toe and added “Besides, I quite like what I see.”

He felt the heat crawling in his cheeks and his ears. He was sure he was blushing dark red. How embarrassing. He couldn’t really imagine she liked what she saw. A trick to keep him watching the monitor and follow her analysis, for sure. On the other hand, he couldn’t really resist those eyes. So, they went back to the console.

She continued her analysis.

“Okay, now after the first sleep phase I think we have three points of telepathic bonding going back to Trenzalore. These are the last points where we see an improvement in vital force, and these are the ones I think I recognized a pattern in that also might hold true for the rest.”

“I like patterns.”

“I know. So, the first one was you thinking about the attack that killed Clara Pinkerton.”

He immediately saw her dead body lying on his bed in Trenzalore and felt his hearts clench.

“There is an uptick. Then, the second bonding. I showed you why you got another regeneration cycle, no change in vital force. And afterwards, the graveyard, again an uptick.”

“The second time you established the bond. It only works if I establish the telepathic connection.” He suggested. This would make sense, he was the trained telepath, not Clara.

“That’s what I thought at first, but it doesn’t match the rest of the samples. No, I think it’s something else.”

He felt her hand reaching around his waist, softly sneaking her body to his side. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder nearly automatically. It felt natural. It felt good. But he also felt that Clara was tense. He heard her swallow hard before she continued to speak.

“Unfortunately, it seems that a telepathic bonding that conveys good memories doesn’t have a positive effect on your vital force. And flashbacks on painful ones drain your life force when you experience them alone. But when we bond and you show me the painful ones, your vital force improves.”

He looked at the monitor and suddenly saw what she saw. She was right, he didn’t like it.

“I think it has to do with facing what burdens your soul, Doctor. When you do it on your own, your emotions flood you and the pain drains your vital force. But when you share it with me, your vital force recovers. Maybe it’s because sharing the pain makes it more bearable and helps you to deal with it better?” 

No, he didn’t like that at all. Whenever he was alone, he heard the screams of dying children. He smelled burning flesh. He saw the endless piles of dead people, people he was unable to save. He experienced how helpless he was and how often people died because of his mistakes. He didn’t want to share this. It shouldn’t burden her as much as it burdened him.

“Nonsense, Doctor,” the small human beside him said. Of course. She had her arm wrapped around his waist. He really sucked at keeping his barriers up with Clara Oswald.

“Doctor, when this is what keeps you from regenerating, if this is what allows us to stay together, isn’t it worth a try? At least once so we know my analysis is right?”

She looked up at him with that look of utter determination. The one she always had when she was about to go out and fight monsters. The one he knew meant he couldn’t stop her from doing whatever she planned to do, no matter how hard he tried. No matter how risky her plan was. The one look that scared him to death, because he always feared it was the last one he would catch from her before he would lose her forever. 

“You never let your fears rule your decisions, as long as I knew you, Doctor. Come here and let me help you. Let me help us.”

She was right. She was always right. He turned to her and wrapped her in his arms. He let his head rest against the head of the clever, brave and impossible woman he loved.

**Author's Note:**

> The smelling of chalk is of course a nod to [Cyndi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyndi/pseuds/Cyndi) and her authistic Twelfth Doctor in the [Whouffaldi Triad](https://archiveofourown.org/series/345962).


End file.
